There are no useful manuals that I am aware of teaching us to accept being old. I repeat what others have often said, "Age is just a number". Cute, but is that really true? Sixteen years ago, a six hear old grandson asked me, "Why old people have to die?" He considered me old then I told him there was not enough room on the earth for everyone if old people didn't die to make room for the new babies being born. That sounded acceptable and he seemed to digest that as fact.
He then asked me if I would be alive when he was twenty. I did a little mental math and said I thought I might be. He followed with, "Will you be alive when I am thirty?" I I told him I didn't want to go that far...maybe, but I wasn't so sure about that one.
Three days ago he celebrated his twentieth birthday and I was very happy to remind him (convinced he would not remember that conversation) he is now twenty and I am still his Yiayia, alive and loving him.
I thought of the generations, some coming and some going all the time. One grandson was born three days after his maternal great grandfather died, conceived a few days of the death of his great grandmother. It is an ever enduring cycle of birth and death as we all spiral thorough our life cycle. We are rarely a one-size-fits-all (that I talk about so much because I firmly believe there is no such thing). One thing I am sure about is that we do not have a conscious after-life of our present life. Our brains are computers whose power supplies die with us, after having gradually slowed their CPU down.
A second thing I request is that I not end up in an urn on anyone's mantle. In today's untrustworthy world, the thought of spending years as part of me in ashes (probably mixed with four or five other people because it is cheaper to light the fire to do more than one at a time) mixed with strangers and having anyone thinking I am there, just as I seek no burial for the same reason. I have been brainwashing my children for years and note that not one of them has a mantlepiece in their house. I have willed my brain to a brain bank for research if it is still usable and my body can go to a first year medical student.. Strangely, I find no discomfort in this plan though it seems to freak some friends out. In fact, I would have my body put out for wild animals to feed on in remote areas if the law allowed. I find that more useful to the planet than 'ashes to ashes; dust to dust', .and a water-proof, metal box with a marble stone atop, cluttering up beautiful land.
Thinking of life spans, I thought of my having only one grandfather to remember, having died at my age 7.. His wife, my paternal grandmother died when I was a couple of months old. My other grandparents were in Europe and I never met them. My grandfather had died when I was 6 (I got to touch his skull in the box where his bones were kept because there was a knot hole in it, when I was in Europe 34 years ago).and my grandmother died when I was in my twenties. However, as proof of longevity in our world today, my great granddaughter has 5 living great grandparents with every indications some of us will be around for a while. When I am gone I will know nothing of her again, but if we all stay around she might grow up knowing how loved she is for a few more years.
A water works man is felled by a Saguaro cactus 15 ft high. The odds of something like this happening is probably greater than winning megabucks. However, since these huge cacti are full of water, they are very heavy and full of spikes, more than 159 of which have been pulled off his skin by the doctors. Read about this unusual situation this poor Arizona city water worker is facing. Click here.
